Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
Even before Sheila opened her eyes, she knew that her right arm was gone.
Blood dripped steadily down from the IV bag, filling her, replacing what had stained the floor of the car. But the needle was stuck in her left arm, the only one that she could still feel. As she lay silent, staring at the ceiling, she remembered the truck bearing down on their car, remembered her side of the car crumpling like paper even as they were forced off the road.
Remembered Max calling her name in the moment before consciousness faded.
"Sheila!" he said once more, real as life. "Sheila, my god, you're alive!", and with a shock, she realized that this was not just memory. "The doctors said you'd be all right, but you looked so still . . ."
She turned her head leftwards to look at him, sitting across the room in a ripped-up chair that barely deserved the term "padded." With great effort, she kept her voice calm as she asked him "How long have you been waiting here?"
"I haven't been watching the clock, " he responded. "I think it must have been a while, though."
He, too, was calm—he'd always been capable of projecting whatever emotion was needed. In front of crowds, he clowned and joked, and many came to watch this strange "magician" perform in parks and squares. He didn't so much as blink when, as he demonstrated to some volunteer that he had relieved her of her earrings, that volunteer failed to notice that Sheila had relieved her of the contents of her back pocket. Even when, in some hotel room, they counted that day's take, he never frowned at the recurrent discovery that they'd made no more than enough for another hotel room and the food and gas needed to reach it.
"You're lucky to be alive," Max told her. "First the truck, then the tree . . . You're going to have a lot of scars from this." He was silent for a moment. "You already know, don't you?"
"What the Head sees, the Hand knows," she told him, echoing one of his more grandiloquent turns of phrase. "And it's the Hand's job to grasp whatever is needed. That's how we fit together—you the thinking, planning Head, and me . . . your good right Hand . . ."
His tone stayed neutral, but she knew him better than anyone else alive. Even lying on her side with her eyes half closed, she could read the pain in his eyes. "I keep thinking that if you'd been driving, you wouldn't have missed the stop sign." "What do we do now?" she asked.
"You lie there and rest, for the moment. I don't think they can charge us if we don't have any money, but I'm not sure how soon they'll boot you out the door. Once we're out of here, we'll look into replacing the car, and we'll figure out where to go next."
"No, what do we do now? The money they threw in your hat was never enough to feed even one of us. I was always the one who made up the difference."
"We'll live. I don't know how, but we'll live. We'll find something. Some way."
"Max, you can't take care of both of us."
His expression cracked. "What are you saying?"
"I'll find something. And you'll be all right, too. You always are. But I can't let you drag me along to slow you down."
"Sheila . . . You were always the one who laughed the hardest at my jokes. Always the one who knew how to cheer me up when I was sad. Sheila, I've been relying on you for so long, and not just for money. You mean more to me than my right hand, and your right hand too."
Before she could argue further, he stood from the chair and crossed over to her bed. She wasn't sure whether she could sit up yet, but he clasped her left hand in his right hand, and he waited silently by her until the nurse arrived.
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
Also known as Katz
That's a strange criticism. In the first place, that's very formulaic—you're not writing term papers here. In the second place, short-shorts are rarely stories with full arcs; they're almost always vignettes. I say that criticism is BS.
Zzzzzzzzzz
I'd say, "Submit elsewhere". What you have there is a character vignette — those don't have "A Beginning, A Middle and An End".
Might want to end it with something like "He dragged the chair closer to the bedside and sat down again. "We'll find a way." "
And I agree that the letter is strangely formulaic.
edited 15th Nov '11 6:39:57 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Your submission of "His Good Right Hand" was reviewed by Geoffrey C Porter.
She loses her arm and her man stands by her side. Two parts.
Form letter rejection. Story seemed to only consist of one or two parts, and we require three parts, Beginning, Middle, and End. Each part should contain an event plus character's reaction to the event and be blended together with smooth transitions (in a perfect world).
I'll put the complete text of the story in the second post (don't worry, it's a short-short—they don't accept anything more than 2,000 words.) First, though, I'd like to discuss the possibilities for modification:
New Beginning
Presumably, this would be a description of the car accident that costs the main character her right arm. I don't think this would add anything, but I could be convinced otherwise.
New End
What happens to the characters? I'd like to write this, but all my ideas are either implausible or incredibly depressing.
New Middle
I have no idea how to do this, but I'm bringing up the possibility anyways.
Submit Elsewhere As Is
This is what I'm inclined to do, but I figured I ought to at least pay some attention to the stated reason for rejection (hence why I'm asking here what I should change, and why.) I figured I'd make a separate thread for it, since the critique thread doesn't seem to look kindly on massive blocks of text.
(Of course, I'll also take any other suggestions on how to improve the story. I've put it through one editor already, so I've hopefully removed any howlers, but it's possible I've botched up something more subtle.)
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful